R. Edward Freeman is the Elis and Signe Olsson Professor of Business Administration at The Darden School, Academic Director of the Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics, and a Senior Fellow of Darden's Olsson Center for Applied Ethics. Freeman is also Professor of Religious Studies and a Faculty Advisor to the University's Institute for Practical Ethics and Adjunct Professor of Stakeholder Management at the Copenhagen Business School in Denmark. Currently he holds honorary professorships, as the Welling Profess at George Washington University and the Gourlay Visiting Professor of Ethics at Melbourne Business Schoolin Australia. Prior to coming to The Darden School Mr. Freeman taught at the University of Minnesota and The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Freeman's book, Managing for Stakeholders: Survival, Reputation and Success, was published in 2007 by Yale University Press. He is also writing Stakeholder Theory: The State of the Art, which will be published by Cambridge University Press in early 2010. He is the author or editor of over twenty volumes in the areas of stakeholder management, business strategy and business ethics as well as more than one hundred articles in a wide variety of publications. Freeman is perhaps best known for his award-winning book: Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach, published in 1984, in which he suggested that businesses build their strategy around their relationships with key stakeholders.
Freeman has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Washington University and a B.A. in Mathematics and Philosophy from Duke University. In 2008 he received an honorary doctorate (Doctor Honoris Causa) from Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Spain for his work on stakeholder theory and business ethics. He has received a number of awards for teaching excellence from The Wharton School, the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, and The Darden School. In 1993 he was chosen for the Outstanding Faculty Award by the Darden student body, in 2001 he was honored by the World Resources Institute and the Aspen Institute with a Pioneer Award for Lifetime Achievement, and in 2005 he received the Outstanding Faculty Award from the Virginia State Council on Higher Education. In 1991, 1998, 2002, 2004, 2007, and 2008 he was selected by the graduating class of The Darden School to be a Faculty Marshall. Mr. Freeman is a lifelong student of philosophy, martial arts, and the blues.
>> Curriculum Vitae (PDF)